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The best in the performing arts from across America.Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:46:03 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2 The Story of Louis Mitchellhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/harlem-in-montmartre-the-story-of-louis-mitchell/917/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/harlem-in-montmartre-the-story-of-louis-mitchell/917/#commentsMon, 25 Jan 2010 22:40:58 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/?p=917The post The Story of Louis Mitchell appeared first on Great Performances.
]]>In conjunction with Black History Month in February, Great Performances presents a special encore telecast of Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story on Sunday, February 7th at 10 p.m. (check local listings).

In connection the upcoming rebroadcast, Great Performances talked to Alice Sparberg Alexiou, scholar and author, to discuss the importance of Louis Mitchell. Mitchell is most famous for recording the first jazz record (1922) in Paris, the iconic “Ain’t We Got Fun” re-enacted in the video.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/harlem-in-montmartre-the-story-of-louis-mitchell/917/feed/0 Historian Tyler Stovall on Montmartrehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/harlem-in-montmartre-historian-tyler-stovall-on-montmartre/829/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/harlem-in-montmartre-historian-tyler-stovall-on-montmartre/829/#commentsThu, 20 Aug 2009 20:10:55 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/?p=829The post Historian Tyler Stovall on Montmartre appeared first on Great Performances.
]]>Tyler Stovall explains the African American community centered around Montmartre outside of Paris, a community filled with key players in black literature and music. Next: Watch and listen to Tyler Stovall recall the days of Bricktop’s.

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Tyler Stovall: Paris was a tremendous amount of fun in the 1920s. I mean, after all, this is the decade of the Lost Generation, of, you know, mostly white artists and writers who, you know, gave up everything to come to France and live the good life.

And so, African-Americans when they came to Paris – if they met other black Americans – they would be told generally, “Well, the only place where there really is a concentration of our people is in Montmartre. And that is because of the jazz clubs. So if you want to meet other black Americans, wait until the sun goes down and then go to these jazz clubs and stay there basically until the sun comes up.”

Ok, Montmartre was and is to this day a distinctive Parisian community. It was as early as the early 19th century a place where because it lay beyond the city walls, alcohol was cheaper there because it didn’t have to pay the tax to go into Paris itself. So there were lots of speakeasy- lots of speakeasies, and lots of bars and cafes there. So it had- by the time African-Americans came in there- came there in the 1920s it had a tradition of over- almost a century of being a place where one went to enjoy good times.

There were tales of a so-called shoeshine boy, an African-American man who worked with the American Express outside Paris, who whenever he met African-Americans coming through would tell them – “Go up to Montmartre. That’s where our people are.”

Ok, these writers- people- the writers that came from America. Writers like Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay – basically the cream of the crop of the Harlem Renaissance who came during the 1920s were attracted to Paris for several reasons. They were attracted because of its literary prominence, above all. They were attracted by the fact that it was one of the greatest cities in Europe. And increasingly, they were attracted by the fact that so many of their colleagues also seemed to be coming to Paris in the summer.

So, they did represent something different. And yet at the same time, there was a strand of the writing of Harlem Renaissance writers – and you find this especially in Claude McKay – that celebrated a certain kind of primitivism. Claude McKay writes his groundbreaking novel Banjo – actually it’s set in Marseilles in the late 1920s – and it really celebrates the primitive, the idea of the non-intellectual. And it’s full of contradictions, of course, because it’s written by an intellectual. And it includes a self-portrait of Claude McKay as one of the primary characters.

Josephine Baker also falls into the whole primitivist narrative. In fact, there’s an interesting little piece by a woman named Paulette Nardal. Paulette Nardal was one of the famous Nardal sisters who really helped create the Negritude movement and brought together African-American, African and Caribbean writers. And at one point she called- she wrote an essay called Exotic Puppets, which was basically a hatchet job on Josephine Baker. And she talked about this little half case from St. Louis shaking her butt on the Paris stage.

Tyler Stovall: Whereas Josephine Baker makes her reputation on the main stages in Paris – the Theatre de Champs Elysees, for example – Bricktop remains for this entire period a fixture of the Montmartre clubs. She first establishes one club named Bricktop’s and then she moves to another one, which she also names Bricktop’s. But if you want to go to a club in Montmartre, hers is ultimately the place to go.

Bricktop’s was a place where you could go and experience the confluence of many different worlds. All sitting around drinking champagne and listening to jazz music and eating American style cuisine. It was very expensive. It was not a place for people who were not flush with money or not willing to spend it, but once you got in the door, you could pay the ticket, you were welcome no matter who you were.

By 1931, 1932 however, the scene in the Montmartre jazz club industry was definitely hurting. Times were not as good as they had been. Even Bricktop, who had been tremendously prosperous during the 1920s is now beginning to feel the pressure.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/harlem-in-montmartre-historian-tyler-stovall-on-bricktops/830/feed/4 Preview of Harlem in Montmartrehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/harlem-in-montmartre-preview-of-harlem-in-montmartre/827/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/harlem-in-montmartre-preview-of-harlem-in-montmartre/827/#commentsWed, 19 Aug 2009 18:39:37 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/?p=827The post Preview of Harlem in Montmartre appeared first on Great Performances.
]]>Beloved American jazz singer and bandleader Cab Calloway once said, “You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmy Luncefords, the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.” While far from ordinary, Harlem in Montmartre tells the story of the long-forgotten “extraordinary ones,” who left America to create the jazz age in Paris between the First and Second World Wars. After peace was signed at Versailles, many black Americans remained in Europe rather than return to the brutal segregation and racism of America. Over the next two decades, they formed an expatriate community of musicians, entertainers and entrepreneurs, primarily congregating in Paris’ hilly Montmartre neighborhood. Some achieved enduring fame, while others faded into history.

Harlem in Montmartre airs as part of PBS’ Great Performances series on THIRTEEN Wednesday, August 26th at 8 p.m. EST (check local listings). The documentary is a co-production of THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG, Vanguard Documentaries, Inc., Ideale Audience SAS, ARTE France and Independent Television Service (ITVS).

Watch a preview of Harlem in Montmartre:

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Inspired by the book Harlem in Montmartre: a Paris Jazz Story (University of California Press) by historian William A. Shack and utilizing rare archival material from both France and America, this remarkable performance- driven documentary features the stories and music of such key figures as James Reese Europe, Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, Bricktop, Eugene Bullard, Django Reinhardt and more. “The film explores a fascinating, yet often neglected, era in African-American cultural history” says producer Margaret Smilow. “It is a colorful, musical, poignant look at the contributions of a select group of black Americans, without whom the collective voice of jazz music around the world would sound entirely different.” Vanguard Documentaries Executive Producer Charles Hobson reveals, “The French were the first people in the world to respect jazz as serious art form, and it all began in Paris with the arrival of the Harlem Hellfighters, a military band.” Directed by Dante J. James, with performance sequences directed by Olivier Simmonet, and written by James and Simmonet with Allan Miller, the production was co-produced by Smilow with Hobson and Helene Le Coeur; S. Epatha Merkerson narrates.

GREAT PERFORMANCES is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. Harlem in Montmartre has been made possible, in part, by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Because democracy demands wisdom. Major funding was also provided by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, Hugh M. Hefner, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, the Vital Projects Fund, the Grand Marnier Foundation, The Paula Vial Fund, the Price Family Foundation and Ann Phillips.